A Good (Self-Sufficient) Man is No Longer Hard to Find

Good news for those self-sufficient off-grid livers and rural-based organic farmers who may have spent Valentine's Day alone in the wilderness. Lonely farm girls—of dirty joke lore?—are looking for the callous-handed love of a farming man, and they are finding these rugged, earthy fellows through a site called FarmersOnly. The site is aimed at uniting lovelorn ruralites for the purposes of holy matrimony and, possibly, a roll in the hay. The Life You Save May Be Your Own Ever imagine living off-grid on a farm, growing your own food, pumping water from a self-dug well, making your own furniture out of felled trees but loathe the soul-crushing loneliness that may accompany such an existence? Concerned that you won't be able to find a prospective mate while living your alternative, green-as-velvet-leaf lifestyle? Have no fear. Lusty rural singles are only a mouse click away. So pick up your solar-powered laptop now.

Good Country PeopleThere are over 100,000 folks in the United States and Canada registered on FarmersOnly, and the site offers its services to all types, except boardroom execs, apparently.

There are basically two groups in America. Group one: their lives revolve around four dollar cups of coffee, taxi cabs, blue suits, high heels, conference rooms and getting ahead at all costs in the corporate world. If you fall into this group you're probably on the wrong online dating site. Group two: they enjoy blue skies, wide open spaces, raising animals, appreciating nature and truly understand the meaning of Southern hospitality, even if they don't live in the South. This group makes up America's Heartland. This is not a geographic area, this is a slice of America with good old fashioned traditional values, values that were never lost by the farmer.

A Stroke of Good Fortune As someone who grew up on a farm and has worked on farms, I'd like to point out that the big-city image of rural folk is just as prejudiced as the rural-folk image of city dwellers. The preceding paragraph paints the picture of all urban dwellers as power-hungry metrosexuals. In the city, rural folks are often depicted as plant-chewing hayseeds who shoot guns into the air when excited. (There is some of that.) But those Yosemite Sam-esque folks can be found in urban areas as well—Council Bluffs, Iowa for example. Jokes about Council Bluffs aside, rural people are a varied and diverse crowd, and many are just as concerned about the environment as any hemp-sandal-wearing city dweller. I mean, you can't have a farmers' market without farmers, right?